More regions of the brain activated, than sitting in the office on a computer.

Designing on the computer would be like playing the violin by hooking it up to wires and tapping on the computer keyboard to get the sweetest sounds played. Not !

Whence my creativity, I know. And, nurture.

Within that zone of creativity, is, I imagine, what others gain from cocaine. Don't know, never tried it. Don't need to, got better.

"Some get a kick from cocaine**I'm sure that if I took even one sniffThat would bore me terrific'ly tooYet I get a kick out of you." Cole Porter

Each time a plan completed the awe in time. Felt like seconds, yet hours passed. Little in life allows me to forget time, or hunger.
." My general formula for my students is "Follow your bliss." Find where it is, and don't be afraid to follow it.

Joseph CampbellThe Power of Mythpp. 120, 149 "..Great fear, indeed. Campbell should have added some in your life add to that fear, not trusting the path you've chosen. .My father was horrified at my career choice, and embarrassed. And vocal. My engineering degree unused, the horticulture degree supporting me..What I do for a living, and how I do it, are the best life choices, for me. Bucking my dad literally made me ill at times. .Best choice I've ever made, and the hardest..Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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Pics from jobsite this spring.
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For a beautiful garden & home filling you with joy, become my client,local/on-line.

Monday, January 20, 2014

Seating to create a gathering spot, figs for summer shade/winter sun over the benches, drystack stone wall cut into a slight slope forcing foot traffic into defined directions, formal boxwood framing pastoral views, tapering stone wall allowing only small machinery into the pasture from this direction, gravel terrace ready for men-trucks-heavy equipment, horses, or a catered soiree for 100.
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And, of course, it must all look a century old, be easy to maintain, and provide interest 24/7.
.When something appears simple, it rarely is. Same is true of people.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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Pic at a jobsite last week.
.Do you know the maximum pollinator habitat, above? Seriously, can you verbalize what creates the best pollinator habitat above? Answer at bottom.
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Being simple requires each of the decades I've been learning about gardens. Better, being simple in a garden, takes me where Joseph Campbell says our eternity is. Ironic, in this American life/era, to have found my bliss in work.
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Friday, March 29, 2013

From her first week cracked out, above, she's loved to be held & have the bottoms of her feet rubbed.

Don't let her divert you, though she is a beautiful girl. Can you tell me what the 'great divide' is between interior & landscape design?

Laura, above, feeling a bit left out, no pun intended, when I was shooting pics in the garden yesterday.

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Don't let Laura divert you either. What is this gulf between interior & garden design?

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Top pic, exposes the gulf beautifully. Makes me proud. Pleased with the many layers of complexity put into its simplicity.

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This 'difference' is critical. Especially for interior decorators to know. Yet, many garden designers do not know it either.

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Gardens must be designed for winter.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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A garden designed for winter will be beautiful all year. Gardens designed for spring will be gorgeous in spring. You are in luck, The Garden In Winter, by Rosemary Verey is affordable again. They must have had a reissue.

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Will totally skip: the finial, gate, color, gravel, axis, slope contained with stone, contrasting textures, form, flow, repetition, eyes to the sky, focal point, subsidiary focal point, fake geometry, and how many neighbors houses you would see without this bit of garden. Designing for winter, yes, that's what you must know first.

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How to test your garden in winter. Are pics of it worthy of a magazine cover? Book cover?

Wednesday, April 4, 2012

She needed something at her gravel parking court. (Tara Dillard's, Queen's Pot, of course. A pot so fabulous it can remain empty. Do all of your pots pass this test?)

Mostly, she has Steve Eaton of Blossom Boxes plant her urns.

She wanted a gate leading into her woodland, fabulous. But it needed another Queen's Pot, this time on a taller plinth, above. And, it's on double axis. More another time, (miss priss) forgot to get the other axis pic.

Another pot, in her backyard, above. Blossom Boxes stayed true to his name: pansies, violas & dwarf snapdragons.
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Met Steve Eaton over 20 years ago. Have seen him in gardens & flower shows ever since. Had him in an episode on my TV show.
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I thought you should know such a man, Steve Eaton of Blossom Boxes, exists. That there is a world where men plant flowers & girls design gardens for their daily bread. A world, they know, is their own Camelot.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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Pics taken in a client garden last week. Steve Eaton, Blossom Boxes, 770-337-8840, sceaton3@yahoo.com.

Saturday, March 10, 2012

Planted last month, below, daffodils. I hope you think they've been there a century.

They arise from Tara Turf, above, more history.

Landscape Design is not hard, it is a lot of easy layers. From a side window at the front door, above.
More than historical, I had to site the daffodils to be ENJOYED by a family. Every member, a wide age range.

From the music room, above.
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Garden & Be Well, Tara
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Pics taken last Thursday. Exciting times here, a son is to be married. Have felt strongly throughout this project there would be babies/children. First, of course, I will let them get married ! Better than babies they are grandbabies. Have a strong bias toward grandbabies because of my own incredible grandparents. It's odd having infertility, I don't miss having my own children but I ache for grandchildren.
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New note, 3-12-12, about daffodil details, quoted from my client, above, " Those bulbs sat in the garden shed for months waiting to be
planted. and it's been a mild winter. never could have fit 2000 bulbs in refrigerator! and they are Divison II Narcissus which do better in the south than Division I.
Carltons (but I don't want a "run" on Carltons!). selfish of me, I guess.

it was an amazing work of planting them in groups like this. and you really don't know how long they've been there. we sit on front porch more often these days, both days and nights to enjoy them. yellow blooms show up well in the evening, almost as well as the white blooms of flowers.

Wednesday, February 15, 2012

A good wager with our mild winter. But you never know what's ahead & it's good to see spunk.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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Pics taken last week in a client garden. She's getting a potager with amended soil & a compost area. Notice her flooring, above? The swimming pool was filled in and the pool decking was kept. The green grass you see had been water.
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I haven't done annuals in winter for over a decade. Instead, relying upon camellia, tea olive, daphne, helleborus, mahonia, kerria, rosmary to bloom, and bloom, and bloom......

Tuesday, January 31, 2012

"but had I place to new fashion, I should not put myself into the hands of an improver. I would rather have an inferior degree of beauty, of my own choice, and acquired progressively. I would rather abide by my own blunders than by his." (Obvious what Jane Austen thinks of this character!)

"YOU would know what you were about of course--but that would not suit ME. I have no eye or ingenuity for such matters, but as they are before me; and had I a place of my own in the country, I should be most thankful to any Mr. Repton who would undertake it, and give me as much beauty as he could for my money; and I should never look at it, till it was complete." (And we know what Jane Austen thinks of this character!)
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From, Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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The flower? In my winter garden. Living history. A camellia of course.

Saturday, January 14, 2012

Pics taken at a project last week. Landscape Design is about designing elements of TIME & PLACE. Received a delightful comment about my home/garden this month, "You've really created your own little world, haven't you?"

Monday, January 9, 2012

A local garden center posted on their Facebook page today about the weather (fog, wet, gray) being dreary and we should come in to buy a houseplant. Really? Puppet Barbuda knows good Landscape Design has no dreary days. Returned moments ago from her garden Puppet Barbuda saw:

Laura, above, following from inside. Not so cute when she hangs from the chandeliers. (Notice the terra cotta sun? It's a wall sundial hiding a faucet.)

With Ivy 'Gold Heart', at the front door. Puppet Barbuda is in earnest about no dreary days. Fell in love with this Ivy while studying Landscape Design in England.

Sasanqua's, above, still in heavy bloom. Native honey bees gather pollen all year in my landscape.

Hellebores, above, opening.

Apples & peaking gold dwarf conifer.

Crazily, with a warm January, fall leaves still falling.
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Dreary?
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Plenty of color.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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Was in my robe/slippers getting these pics a few minutes ago. Laura followed me, from inside, around the entire house while photographing. Wish I had time for more pics....

Thursday, April 28, 2011

A new thread to that thought, design a summer garden to look like winter. Hmmmmm. In the heat/humidity/mosquito summer seeing a cooling garden of winter. Interesting.Summer, above, Lake Maggiore, Italy. This qualifies.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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How do I know it's a summer pic? I took it.

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Epiphany came reading, "Ms. Malcolm's books have wintry atmospheres - both intellectual and aesthetic - that derive partly from the way she takes facts and attaches them, like someone hanging tea-light candles from high rafters, to mythology and classic literature, mostly Russian." "When a relative recalls, in the courtroom, the dead man eating a pomegranate, the Comp Lit student in Ms. Malcolm pounces. "Of course he was eating a pomegranate," she writes. "Characters in Russian literature are always eating (or offering) fruit at significant moments." Dwight Garner, New York Times, in his book review, Iphigenia in Forest Hills: Anatomy of a Murder Trial, by Janet Malcolm.

Consider all of the above & you won't wait 3 years, or 3 seconds, for a beautiful garden.

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Proof is in the pics above.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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Look at the new frontdoor again. See what I did? Took out the transom, replaced with a taller door. Getting rid of that subdivisiony horrendous aspect, ca. 1970's, of windows/door at same height. Guess how we chose the color for the frontdoor? (Another post.)

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Eco Gardening is a SMALL concept. Vanishing Threshold is how I create a garden.

Monday, March 21, 2011

Vanishing Threshold is an original concept, an epiphany while studying historic landscapes in Italy. Landscapes begin inside your home. Place focal points on axis with key views. It's that simple.

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An inner voice impels me to take Vanishing Threshold out of the garden realm. Are you an Interior Decorator? Landscape Designer? Come hear me speak about creating beautiful landscapes in Vanishing Threshold with your home.

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AmericasMart, Lunch & Learn:Looking for inspiration and education between Markets? Join Tara Dillard for a demonstration on successfully incorporating outdoor living spaces into your designs - March 24, noon-1pm, at AmericasMart. RSVP to 404-220-2055 or nlyle@americasmart.com.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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Pot on plinth, above, on axis from my living room. Centered on window. Interior decorators, are you looking out the windows of your clients home? Interiors are not finished unless the window views are part of a home's interior. My landscape designs are not complete unless views into windows are fabulous.

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Designer? What is original to you? What is your horse/pony show? Willing to get out of your comfort zone & let the world know?

Tuesday, February 8, 2011

Contrasts. Contrast EVERYTHING in your landscape. Big leaves next to small leaves. Burgundy foliage next to green foliage. Spikey flowers next to round flowers. Square terrace with round urns at its entry.Contrasts on this new home are wicked good.Curves, squares, arcs, circle, colors, wood, brick, glass, slopes, rectangles, peaks, valleys, flat, vertical.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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The next easy design tool? Repetition.

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Yes, a good book: Landscape Design: Contrasts & Repetition. (Now, finding time to write it!) Just when you get your contrasts correct it's time to repeat, repeat, repeat......... No worries, it took me a long time to latch on to these tools.